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Here is a portal by BSNL where you can pay your Telephone bills online: https://portal1.bsnl.in/aspxfiles/instaPay.aspx. After a long time BSNL people have started making use of technology for public services, apart from providing basic broadband.

I have been paying my land-line bill online since 6-7 months through the same portal, and I had to provide my phone number and account number at the initial stage, and later I was asked for my bank details for making the payment. I guess people were confused with the account number field, and hence last month BSNL made some changes to the portal text fields. Nowadays we don’t have to provide the account number, and it serves as the Truecaller app for getting the owner’s name. Along with the owner’s name, it gives the outstanding payment details. I think in this way BSNL’s portal is not seriously considering our privacy. Anybody can get the name of the owner and the bill details by just providing their phone-number. It works for individual bills, and not for corporate.

Comparing the BSNL’s portal with Truecaller, it provides better facilities – we can get the verified name of the phone owner (as in BSNL database) and the current bill details. And the best point – unlike Truecaller, we don’t need to provide our authentication details or install the app on our phone for BSNL’s portal. This may not be a security issue for the customers, but it is totally violating the privacy.

(You can give it a try. Visit the Instapay portal. Enter the BSNL land-line number of your friend, and the captcha code. You dont need to provide any mobile number or email address. Click ‘Submit’ and you will be provided the land-line owner’s name and their outstanding amount.)